GOP presidential frontrunner and former president, Donald Trump, landed one of his lowest-rated townhall events in recent years on Thursday night on Fox News.
The town hall event hosted by Sean Hannity in Iowa brought in 2.78 million total average viewers at 9 p.m. and 320,000 viewers in the key 25-54 age demographic, almost half a million fewer viewers than Trump’s CNN town hall on May 10th. The hour led cable news for the day, however.
Trump’s CNN town hall, hosted by Kaitlin Collins, scored 3.31 million total viewers and 781,000 demo viewers – a major boost for the ratings-beleaguered network.
For context, Fox’s last six Trump town hall events outperformed CNN delivering 5.1 million, 4.4 million, 4.2 million, 3.8 million, 3.5 million, and 3.2 million — with Hannity’s June 2020 event leading the way.
The Trump Fox event still led to a solid ratings win for Fox News’s prime time, which scored 2.06 million total viewers and 229,000 demo viewers – beat CNN and MSNBC combined. Notably, however, Fox averaged 2.07 million prime time viewers in April and 1.42 million viewers in May — the first full month since Tucker Carlson’s firing.
CNN saw its Thursday ratings prime time average up a bit with 521,000 total average viewers, while MSNBC brought 1.43 million total viewers. CNN’s Trump town hall resulted in weeks of criticism and internal turmoil. The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta concluded a sprawling profile of CNN CEO Chris Licht on Friday by writing, “He had hoped the Trump town hall would make believers out of his critics. Instead, it turned his few remaining believers into critics. I had never witnessed a lower tide of confidence inside any company than in the week following the town hall at CNN.”
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